Articles by Barbara Ina Frenz
Greg Paul: We Can Share These Commonalities
by Barbara Ina Frenz
Drummer, composer, and band leader Greg Paul--born in 1987 and raised in Buffalo, NY--remembers his home town as a place of lived community, especially among musicians. That spirit never left him. On the contrary: he took it to the metropolis of Los Angeles where he relocated in 2011 and still lives today as an internationally acknowledged and sought-after musician. Growing up with gospel music, he gathered his first professional experiences as a drummer at an early age--in the ...
read moreLeonard E. Jones: Taking Control Of Destiny
by Barbara Ina Frenz
Bassist and photographer Leonard E. Jones laid the foundation of his musical and artistic ideas as an original member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. The AACM ranks as the most well-known and influential organization of the 1960s under African American leadership that created American experimental music through challenging “racialized limitations on venues and infrastructure" (George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself, 2008) to make this music thrive and reach the highest levels. Lewis characterizes the ...
read moreGroove Town: Buffalo Jazz And Its Legacy - Historical Insights
by Barbara Ina Frenz
From early on, Buffalo attracted musicians as a place to live and pursue their artistic endeavors—and they were excellent ones: Lil Hardin Armstrong, Jimmie Lunceford, Pete Johnson, and Stuff Smith. Dodo Greene, two masters of polyrhythm, Frankie Dunlop and Clarence Becton, as well as pianist and bassist Wade Legge grew up here. Two distinctive voices on the saxophone, Charles Gayle and Grover Washington Jr., come from and developed their respective sounds in this city. Juini Booth and Sabu Adeyola as ...
read moreClifton Anderson: Knowing the Road
by Barbara Ina Frenz
New York trombonist Clifton Anderson has mastered his instrument from the 1970s on in jazz programs of his home town outside the conservatory (which he also attended), that were initiated by leading spirits of the music such as Barry Harris, Sam Rivers, and Reggie Workman; these informal, professional jazz circles gave him information, insights and inspiration that the academic world couldn't provide in those days. Equally important for his development as a trombonist was his constant collaboration with musical giants ...
read moreBurton Greene: From Bomb To Balm
by Barbara Ina Frenz
Chicago-born pianist Narada Burton Greene (b.1937) can be called a veteran of the 1960s jazz avant-garde—the starting point of his universal musical life. In 1962, he moved to New York and founded, together with bassist Alan Silva, the Free Form Improvisational Ensemble, which played improvised music without preconceived compositional elements. In 1965, he became a member of the Jazz Composers Guild, founded by Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor. The Jazz Composers Guild resonated with the community spirit that Greene had ...
read moreCasey Benjamin: EclectRic Expressionism
by Barbara Ina Frenz
Casey Benjamin aka Stutzmcgee--all-through New Yorker with Caribbean roots, born in 1978--grew up in the borough of Queens in a musical household. Despite economically rough conditions that his mother, a single parent, heroically managed, he started with piano around six, added the alto saxophone around ten, and the vocoder and talk-box around fifteen. At sixteen, he performed on alto saxophone together with Grover Washington Jr. on TV, and two years later he toured Europe as a saxophonist with Betty Carter, ...
read moreClarence Becton: Straight Ahead Into Freedom
by Barbara Ina Frenz
Clarence Becton is a musicians' musician—meaning, someone well-known in musician circles. He belongs to the generation of American jazz heroes who grew up under economically and socially difficult circumstances, and for that very reason, succeeded in gaining a comprehensive education, emancipating himself, and embodying the history of jazz music by directly learning from and working with greats of almost every stylistic era—ragtime, swing, bebop, post-bop, and avant-garde. Born in 1933, he developed a strong musical interest as a ...
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